President Donald Trump’s comments yesterday empowering his Cabinet members to take charge of staffing and firing decisions at their departments — and seeming to limit the power of Elon Musk and his DOGE team, while calling for more surgical job cuts — came after an “explosive” meeting in which some officials openly clashed with Musk, The New York Times reports.
“Cabinet officials almost uniformly like the concept of what Mr. Musk set out to do — reducing waste, fraud and abuse in government — but have been frustrated by the chain saw approach to upending the government and the lack of consistent coordination,” write Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman of the Times.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy both reportedly faced off with Musk over his push for more firings. Rubio “had been privately furious” with Musk for weeks, they write, and “got his grievances off his chest” at the meeting. The transportation secretary reportedly claimed Musk’s team was trying to lay off air traffic controllers even as Duffy was trying to deal with plane crashes.
Trump reportedly praised Musk and his Cabinet secretaries but also explicitly put the secretaries in charge of the staffing reduction efforts on their turf. The White House called the meeting “great and productive” and said that everyone on Trump team is working together to make the government more efficient. Trump told media members in the Oval Office on Friday that there is no clash between Musk and Rubio, contrary to the detailed Times report.
The bottom line: Politicos love the juicy details and blow-by-blow exposing the intrapersonal dynamics and simmering tensions at the top levels of the Trump administration. But while it’s noteworthy that Trump chose to rein in Musk and do so publicly, it remains to be seen just how much of a turning point Thursday’s meeting might be. Trump said yesterday he will hold similar Cabinet meetings every two weeks.